Bush Names New Staff Chief and Campaign Team

By ANDREW ROSENTHAL,

Published: December 6, 1991

WASHINGTON, Dec. 5—
President Bush tried to halt his political slide today by appointing Samuel K. Skinner and Robert M. Teeter, a pair of pragmatic moderates, to run his staff and his re-election campaign.

As he appointed Mr. Skinner, who is now Transportation Secretary, as his chief of staff, and Mr. Teeter, who is his poll-taker, as his day-to-day campaign manager and chief political strategist, Mr. Bush also made a new attempt to demonstrate his concern for what he called the "extraordinarily sluggish" economy.

He announced that he was speeding up $9.7 billion in Federal spending for 1992 in hopes of spurring economic growth but he made it clear that he was still planning to wait until his State of the Union address in late January to make any substantive economic proposals. Sununu's Replacement

Mr. Bush named Mr. Skinner to replace John H. Sununu, the combativeformer Governor of New Hampshire who tendered his forced resignation on Tuesday. Mr. Skinner is to take up his new duties on Dec. 16, and White House advisers predicted a sharp departure from Mr. Sununu's autocratic, exclusionary operating style. [ Man in the News, page A27. ]

At a White House news conference, the President also named the seven top officials of his 1992 campaign staff, who included Commerce Secretary Robert A. Mosbacher as the general campaign chairman. It was an array of longtime advisers and political tacticians chosen more for their closeness to the President and their campaign resumes than for their adherence to conservative Republican ideology.

As six of the seven immediately huddled in a White House office for their first organizational session, members of the party's rebellious right wing promptly denounced the lineup, including Mr. Skinner.

Mr. Bush brushed off the challenge to his candidacy from the Republican right. Instead, he seemed eager to clear the air of confusion in his White House after weeks of buffeting from Democratic and conservative Republican attacks on his economic policies.

Incongruously, Mr. Bush still declined to announce his candidacy for re-election, a formality that he said he was putting off until early next year. But Mr. Bush's appearance was suffused with the words and tone of a Presidential candidate trying to recoup lost ground, even as he acknowledged that he had lost some of the confidence of the public.

Asked why Americans' faith had been shaken in a President who once soared in the opinion polls and whether he could win the election if the economy is still bad next year, Mr. Bush said: "The answer to the first question is the economy. The answer to the second -- you said if the economy is bad can I get re-elected -- and the answer is, 'Yes, 'cause I'm a good President.' "

Mr. Skinner will control the President's schedule, have a strong hand in policy and help formulate what the White House has to say on all issues. In this way, he will have a major voice in the campaign from his office, an arrangement that many Republicans thought would have been virtually impossible under Mr. Sununu. Mr. Skinner gets along well with all of the members of the new campaign team, especially Mr. Teeter, whom he first met on the 1966 Illinois gubernatorial campaign of James R. Thompson.

Mr. Bush's appointment of Mr. Skinner immediately touched off anticipation in the White House that he would radically revamp Mr. Sununu's staff structure. Mr. Sununu had concentrated all of the power in his own hands and those of Richard G. Darman, the budget director, who has clashed in the past with Mr. Skinner but who is likely to remain a potent force.

"We'll more likely go back to a more normal White House staff, with a broader sweep in the domestic policy office and a broader sweep in the communications office -- four or five essential players instead of one or two," said one official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity. Essential Challenge

But Mr. Skinner's essential challenge will not lie in staff reorganization.

"We can improve communications a little, he can do this and he can do that, and it can be a friendlier place than under Sununu," the official said. "But the rap against Sununu was that Brent Scowcroft and those guys had a coherent and apparently successful foreign policy but where is the domestic policy?" Mr. Scowcroft is the President's National Security Adviser.

The official added: "The conventional wisdom is that a lot of Republicans around town think that the campaign has the heavyweights, the campaign's going to run everything. They will be very, very important. But in a re-election, you have to govern and you're going to be judged to some degree on your governing. Skinner's well aware of that."

As the removal of Mr. Sununu, a staunch conservative, had become an increasingly foregone conclusion over recent weeks, conservatives have been agitating for some presence in the White House staff.

"Bush didn't even throw a bone to the conservatives today," said Richard Viguerie, chairman of United Conservatives of America. "This announcement today is going to cause conservatives to realize that they have no stake in the Bush White House. This was an insult."

Although many conservatives have now targeted Mr. Darman as their primary adversary on the Bush team, Mr. Skinner has already undertaken damage-control efforts.

Vice President Dan Quayle polled Capitol Hill conservatives before Mr. Bush announced his appointment and is preparing to protect Mr. Skinner's right flank. Some White House aides have speculated that Mr. Skinner, who has a reputation as a get-along Chicago "pol," could bring in a conservative deputy, in much the way that Howard H. Baker Jr. did when President Ronald Reagan made him chief of staff and he brought in Kenneth Cribb, a conservative aide to Edwin Meese 3d.

Mr. Bush said today that he did not believe he had had a problem with his conservative wing, from which David Duke, the former Nazi and Ku Klux Klansman, has already mounted a campaign. Patrick J. Buchanan, the conservative commentator and former Nixon and Reagan White House aide, is expected to announce a challenge to Mr. Bush next week. 'Get Out Our Message'

Asked what he could do to counter these challenges, Mr. Bush said: "Get our message out, help turn this economy around, help people and get our record, through a very active campaign organization, out to the American people. The playing field has had a handful of people out there who don't see things the way I do, this campaign field. And they've been dominating, because there's been nobody out there shooting back."

Mr. Skinner's appointment, which had been expected, was the centerpiece of today's news conference. But at the same time, the President moved to ease concerns within the Republican Party that he was taking too long to put his campaign into motion by naming the top staff of Bush-Quayle '92.

Although he will be general chairman, Mr. Mosbacher will not have overall control of the campaign strategy. Mr. Bush gave that power to Mr. Teeter, a Michigan poll-taker who has been a leading Bush adviser for years but has no experiencing running a national campaign. Nuts and Bolts

Frederic V. Malek, a businessman, former Nixon White House aide and a longtime friend of Mr. Bush, was named as the nuts-and-bolts manager in charge of the campaign organization itself.

Charles Black, a Republican consultant whom Mr. Bush today described as the successor to his longtime political tactician, the late Lee Atwater, will be a "senior adviser" to the campaign, an influential post that he will hold on a part-time basis.

Mary Matalin, a protegee of Mr. Atwater who is now chief of staff of the Republican National Committee, will be in charge of state organizations, ballot filing and delegates, a job normally given the title of political director.

Mr. Bush also said that Richard N. Bond, a Republican consultant who was his 1988 political director, will play an important role in the campaign, along with his son, George W. Bush.

Republican strategists said Mr. Bond will have a part-time advisory role, subordinate to Mr. Black. Mr. Bush's son, one official said, "will do what he always has done -- act as his father's ultimate confidant, eyes and ears, trouble shooter, problem solver, and appeal of last resort."

Photos: Members of President Bush's re-election team and advisers at the White House. From left were Samuel K. Skinner, new chief of staff; his predecessor, John H. Sununu; Commerce Secretary Robert A. Mosbacher, campaign chairman; Robert M. Teeter, chief strategist; Richard N. Bond, field organizer; Frederic V. Malek, campaign manager; Clayton Yeutter, Republican national chairman; Robert Holt, fund-raiser, and Mary Matalin, political director. Secret Service agents stood at rear. (Jose R. Lopez/The New York Times) (pg. A1); President Bush meeting in the Oval Office with Samuel K. Skinner, whom Mr. Bush appointed his chief of staff. (Reuters) (pg. A26)